


I'm Doing This For Me (And You)

by NobleRose



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Felix is Mentioned, Found Love, Hanahaki Disease, Locnut, Lolix implied but not positively, M/M, Unrequited Love, first person POV, is that the ship name???, locus pov, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NobleRose/pseuds/NobleRose
Summary: “How long have you loved that awful man?” He asked me.“Too long,” I answered, and another bout of coughing struck me hard, flowers rising in my throat and tumbling out of my open mouth onto the floor of the structure we had been racing to just hours before.“Too long is right, honey.”





	I'm Doing This For Me (And You)

**Author's Note:**

> This was really fun to write, and I don't do a lot of writing from first person POV, so it was partially an exercise in perspective! This is definitely a rarepair, but I enjoyed writing it nonetheless.

“I’m doing this for me.”

Underneath my helmet, I smiled, feeling the cough bubbling up in my chest. Not the first time that day.

Felix’s rage was evident in his voice. “Then you can die with the rest of them!” He shouted, flinging the active energy sword at me. It would have hit me had I not collapsed at that moment with the cough, flowers coming out of my mouth, filling my helmet, making it harder to breathe...

The others noticed, of course, but chose to put Felix as the top priority for the moment. A brief battle - I couldn’t look - and an explosion.

I looked up long enough to see him fall.

Then they turned to me. I heard them whisper. Should they kill me? Should they take me to Kimball and have me locked away forever? Should they just let me go, having indirectly killed Felix myself?

I started coughing again, and for reasons I could not discern, Donut ran to me. He shooed the others away as they peered down at me, and took my hand.

I felt warmer.

The coughing persisted, and as the others looked at my weak, heaving form and my now-discarded helmet, full of the flowers that came from within my weak and overcrowded lungs, they put the pieces together.

“Oh, honey, those are whole flowers,” Donut said. He knew, as I did, what that meant. It meant this had gone on far too long. Then he turned to the others. “Let me talk to him, okay? He… doesn’t have much longer, I don’t think.”

They stepped back, uncertainly, slowly, not wanting to turn their backs on me even with the promise that I was nearing my last moments. “Go,” he said, forcefully, and they did that time, turning around and heading to wherever they were supposed to rendezvous with their Freelancer friends.

Donut looked down at me and squeezed my hand gently.

“How long have you loved that awful man?” He asked me.

“Too long,” I answered, and another bout of coughing struck me hard, flowers rising in my throat and tumbling out of my open mouth onto the floor of the structure we had been racing to just hours before.  
“Too long is right, honey.” I could do nothing but nod, the flowers and their petals still falling. I tried to clench my jaw, to shut my mouth, to make it stop, but I couldn’t. It had gone on for too long. 

Eventually, the coughing stopped, giving me a moment to breathe. My throat hoarse, my breathing short and ragged, I looked up at the man who had chosen to stay with me after all I had done to him and his friends, after all the pain I had inflicted on the world he and the others had worked so hard to save.

“Why are you still here?” I asked him, weakly. It was more of a whisper than anything, a tiny whisper that was dragged away by the wind almost as soon as it was spoken. Still, he heard me. 

“Because I saw my mother die like this. Because I saw my friend die like this. Because I don’t want to see YOU die like this. Because no one… and I mean NO ONE… deserves to suffer the way you are right now.”

I shook my head. 

“Go to your friends.”

“No, Locus. I’m not leaving you.” I tilted my head, confused. I didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. Why… why did he act so kind, after all I had done?

“Locus?”

“Yes…?”

“What happened to your face?” 

I had forgotten that I’d removed my helmet to get the flowers away from my face. The scar… the reminder of days that had long since passed… was in plain view.

“The war,” I responded, simply. 

“I understand,” he said, with a softness in his voice that I wasn’t sure I had heard from ANYONE before, much less an enemy. Then he removed his own helmet.

Beneath it was a mess of scars on the right side of his face, part of his hair burned off and scarred, the ruined tissue almost reaching his eye. He smiled at me as I stared - realized I was staring, pulled my eyes away, ashamed.  
“It’s okay. Pretty nasty, huh? War gives people some really nasty scars.” I nodded, dumbstruck. He touched my cheek with the hand that wasn’t holding my own. His gloved hand against my cheek should have been rough with the texture of the bodysuit, but somehow it still felt soft, warm, pressed against my face as if he was scared to break me.

No one had ever been scared to break me before.

“Hey Locus?”

“Yes?” I answered, with less hesitation this time.  
“I need to tell you something.” I nodded, motioned for him to continue as another weak bout of coughing erupted from my chest.

“When I met you, in the Federal Army’s base, I was enamored. Infatuated, I suppose you could say. And then… then I found out what you’d done… and it hurt. It hurt so badly, because I had thought I could trust you, and in my heart I had already fallen. I’m lucky I didn’t get sick like you are…” 

He paused.

“But Locus, I know that you have been manipulated. He’s been using you for years, and without his influence, darling, you’d never have done this. It’s just circumstance, that brought you to this point. Circumstance and someone else’s cruelty. So I don’t blame you… not a bit. And I want you to know…”

I tilted my head, waiting for him to continue. He smiled, and as I looked at him between gasps for air, I saw tears in the corners of his eyes.

“I want you to know that even if he never loved you… I do.”

Something in my chest felt lighter.

“I love you, Locus. And I’m going to be here until the end.”

I coughed again.

I coughed, and nothing came out of my lungs.

And he smiled at me, brighter than before.

“I guess it really just takes someone to love you to cure it, huh?” His smile turned to a grin. “You never needed him, Locus. You just needed to be loved. And now you are.”

He squeezed my hand, and with quivering hands and half-closed eyes, I squeezed back. He helped me to my feet, and with shaky legs and a heaving chest, I rose. He kissed my cheek and slung my arm over his shoulder, and with lighter lungs and a warmer heart, I smiled.

That was the first time I had smiled in a long time.


End file.
